Case Number 10519: Small Claims Court

LOVE CIRCLES

The Charge

An international odyssey of sexual immorality!

The Case

The Private Screening Collection has previously presented us with Lady
Libertine and Black Venus. Both were "late nite" softcore
films that ran on cable, which was the '80s answer to Internet porn. Both were
period costume dramas produced by Harry Alan Towers. And both were pretty
good.

Like its predecessors, Love Circles is a 1980s era, late night cable
skin flick produced by Towers. Unlike Lady Libertine and Black
Venus, Love Circles is not a period "drama." No, Love
Circles is set in modern day 1985. Perhaps the veil of the period costumes
is required to suspend disbelief, or perhaps Love Circles is simply
subpar, but in any case it fails to meet the lofty expectations of its late nite
cable cohorts. (If you've seen any of those cohorts, you'll recognize that I
have just deeply insulted Love Circles.)

Don't get me wrong, Josephine Jacqueline Jones and Sophie Berger are as hot
as ever. The women are not the problem here. The problem is that Love
Circles takes itself seriously, while simultaneously throwing in slapstick
comedy bits. When combined with the wretched dubbing, interminable filler
scenes, and a core shtick that gets old quickly, Love Circles is the
ultimate test of resisting the fast-forward button.

The basic plot is this. Some random American stud in a Paris night club gets
picked up by an impossibly hot woman (stunning French cult star Marie-France).
They boink, and she gives him a pack of cigarettes. He meets someone else; in
this case, Josephine Jacqueline Jones, who chases him around her apartment in
frantic fast forward, clawing the air like a tiger while offbeat piano keys
tickle in the soundtrack. They boink. He gives her the cigarettes. She meets
someone else...how long, do you think, before some random American stud wanders
into a Paris night club and hands the cigarettes to Marie-France? Sadly, Love
Circles treats this like a major revelation in the same echelon as Rosebud
or Luke's father. Trust me, we saw it coming an hour ago. No need to spend
excruciating minutes setting up this "finale."

"They boink" covers a lot of territory, though sadly not as much
real estate as it should out of the 93 minutes. How are the love scenes? Well,
the women are extremely attractive. The scenes aren't bad. It's just -- dare I
say this? -- they're overshadowed by the plot. There is a hangover from each
expository scene that would require several minutes of exquisite nudity to fully
erase from our minds. As it stands, we barely have time to shake off the funk
before we're assaulted with another awful filler scene.

If you somehow find yourself in possession of Love Circles, all is
not lost. The last contestant in the cigarette pack sweepstakes is the lusty
Lisa Allison. For some inexplicable (but blessed) reason, director Gérard
Kikoïne strays from his slavish devotion to the formula with Lisa Allison.
There is a modicum of tension built up. She doesn't doff her clothes right away.
We have time to want her. And she gets more than the requisite two screws before
her time is up. When you take into account that she is the most buxom and
sensual of the lot, this is a good time to break the love circle.

By the way, I had to follow up on this claim from assassinn70 on IMDb:"If you watch the very last love scene you will see the sex act being
taped on a video camera if you watch on view screen of the camera the sex is
100% real and you see penetration it was one of my first views of porn and for
that I salute it." I missed this subtlety the first time around, but
indeed, the transition shot to the TV screen does reveal penetration. That
technically makes Love Circles hardcore.

Like the other Private Screenings discs, this one comes to you as if
straight from 1980s cable television. Set in full frame with poor contrast and
faint scan lines, Love Circles is not a video showpiece. The mono track
antiseptically delivers the flat, wretched dub job and wraithlike soundtrack.
There are no extras, but what would there be? "The Impact of Love
Circles on Cinema History?" "How to make your own Love
Circle" featurette?

For nostalgia value alone, and the chance to see an '80s flick in the wild,
Love Circles has value. Stunning women like Josephine Jacqueline Jones,
Sophie Berger, Marie-France, and Lisa Allison don't hurt. But I cannot overstate
how much this plot reeks. For your sake, watch Love Circles the way
softcore skin flicks were meant to be watched: with a judicious finger on the
fast forward button.